A History of Language Teaching beyond Normative Sources

Studies of the history of foreign language teaching are frequently based (predominantly) on normative sources. Scholars rely on ideas that have been laid down in theoretical writings as well as guidelines in curricula, textbooks, or school programmes. They thus gain only incomplete insights—if any—into actual teaching practice because of a lack of valid sources that allow historiographic access into what has actually happened in classrooms. This might be seen as highly problematic, because these normative sources all have a common weakness, namely that they merely represent a desired state, that is, a norm of how something should (have) be(en). Conclusions drawn from these sources on actual practice should be reflected on very critically, because we know from other contexts how indirect and vague the connection tends to be between what should be and what actually is—especially in a complex system like school. Schools have therefore been described as “loosely coupled systems”, which prove to be very robust against top-down influences from normative sources—that is, reforms that are imposed (for example, politically) from outside the system. Tyack and Tobin call this stability of the central organizational structures the “grammar” of schooling. Cuban has come to a similar conclusion concerning the essential features of teaching practice.